Blog Readability – Bork Bork Bork!

Several other bloggers (Wendy Wickham, Karyn Romeis, Harold Jarche, Stephen Downes) have posted their blog reading level. When I tested mine today, I ended up at the college (postgrad) reading level. Interestingly, when I checked it earlier in the week, I was at high school level. Most of what was up at that point was link blogging though, and it’s plausible that the writing level for my link blogging is different from my full posts.

I think I agree with comments made by several others that easier reading levels might be better. I know I personally tend to skim a lot of blog posts, and if I can’t get the gist of the message quickly, I sometimes skip it. The first blog where I saw this readability test, Musical Perceptions, tested at the “genius level.” His reaction was “so much for aiming for a wide audience,” and I understand that. But when we’re wrestling with complex ideas, sometimes our explanations and our “thinking out loud” maybe needs to be complex. And while a wide audience might be nice, I do think it’s more realistic for me to write to the little niche audience of instructional designers, instructors, and ed tech folks I have.

The readability test doesn’t seem like something worth taking too seriously though, especially since my level changed just in the course of a few days. Maybe it’s because I’m ready for Friday already, but I’m in the mood for something a little silly. If you recognized the post title as a reference to the Swedish Chef, you’ll no doubt appreciate what my writing sounds like after being filtered by the encheferizer. For the best effect, read it out loud in your best mock Swedish voice.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about with the Swedish Chef…well, hopefully you knew I was weird before this. Just ignore the rest of this post and move to the next item in your aggregator.

@Poonam, thanks for leaving your first comment here! It’s always nice to meet a new reader.

The readability test is certainly not a particularly scientific test. It’s fun, and it’s started some good conversations. Readability is certainly relevant to instructional design. As you pointed out to one of the commenters on your post, being able to explain technical content at an elementary school level is a great skill to have.

@Wendy, yeah for finding another Muppet fan! I couldn’t get the Google Bork to work either. Maybe it’s no longer up. The Muppet Wiki entry for the Swedish Chef mentions a Firefox add-on too, but I’m having trouble getting into the extensions page without it timing out this morning. I’ll play with it later though. Fun stuff!

Google Bork is still around. And a few years ago (around 2001/2002) – it used to also send back results in Swedish Chef. I’m not entirely sure whether my browser settings are no longer allowing Google Bork to do that or if they took the Borkizer out of the program.

However, this readability tool is not accurate. It gives random results for same text (blog posts). Also try checking readability of google. It says genius. What is there in the site to call it genius?